The invention relates to a combined wrapping and conveying apparatus and method for wrapping elongated articles with a spiral wrap of material while the articles are being conveyed on a conveyor.
Combined wrapping and conveying systems which wrap articles with a spiral wrap of material while being moved by the conveyor are known per se. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 4,050,220 discloses a wrapping mechanism which spirally wraps individual packages which are being transported by a conveyor system.
Conveyor systems are also known per se, though not for bundling articles in a package, which have two or more arrays of intersecting driven rollers for conveying articles. See U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,667,261 and 3,473,291. The angle of intersection between the arrays of driven rollers in U.S. Pat. No. 3,473,291 is fixed. The angle of intersection between the arrays of driven rollers in U.S. Pat. No. 2,667,261 may be varied.
The present invention comprises an apparatus and method for wrapping elongated articles, such as rolls of cloth, with a spiral wrap of sheet material, to form a multi-sided package which rests on a predicted flat side when exiting from a conveyor. The invention includes an infeed conveycr which conveys elongated articles which are to be wrapped into a multiple sided package to a wrapping station and an outfeed conveyor for conveying the resultant multi-sided wrapped package which rests on a predicted side from the wrapping station to another location where further processing of the wrapped articles may take place. Both the infeed and outfeed conveyors have a support frame having first and second sets of rotatably driven rollers which intersect to form a "V" shaped cross-section. The V shaped cross-section of the infeed conveyor defines an angle A which has a bisecting plane that intersects the longitudinal axis of the infeed conveyor and the V shaped cross-section of the outfeed conveyor defines an angle B which has a bisecting plane that intersects the longitudinal axis of the outfeed conveyor. The invention includes means for varying the angular orientation of the bisector of the angle A with respect to the bisector of the angle B to permit the multiple sided package which is formed at the wrapping station to be positioned on a predicted side when it leaves the outfeed conveyor and means for varying the angles A and B.
It is the primary object of the present invention to provide an effective and versatile method and apparatus for spiral wrapping of a bundle of conveyed articles. This and other objects of the invention will become clear from an inspection of the detailed description of the invention, and the appended claims.